1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to interactive inspection processes, and more particularly relates to an interactive inspection process for identifying, evaluating and controlling industry hazards.
2. Description of the Related Art
Safety and quality assurance is vital to the success of any business, and particularly important to food service industries, where food borne hazards are estimated to cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year. The enormity of the food service industry, coupled with the diversity of food products and methods for food processing present unique challenges to food safety and quality assurance programs. Moreover, food borne hazards are inherently elusive as new food pathogens continue to emerge and unrecognized food pathogens become more widespread.
To reduce the prevalence of food borne disease, the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) recently requested that food service industries comply with standardized principles incorporated into the Food Code that systematically identify, evaluate and control food safety hazards “from the farm to the table.” Specifically, these principles, known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (“HACCP”) principles, focus on preventing food borne hazards, such as microbial contamination, by identifying points at which hazardous materials can be introduced into food, and then by monitoring these potential problem areas and immediately correcting problems that arise.
HACCP is a seven-step process, including (1) conducting a hazard analysis; (2) establishing critical control points; (3) establishing critical limits; (4) establishing monitoring procedures; (5) establishing corrective action; (6) verification; and (7) recordkeeping. In operation, a HACCP-based program may proceed as follows. First, a hazard analysis may be conducted to collect and evaluate information to identify potential hazards. Critical control points, or points where conditions can be controlled to prevent, eliminate or reduce their hazardous potential, may then be established and critical limits defined.
Critical limits define parameters within which the condition may be considered controlled. For example, a critical limit may correspond to a maximum temperature of a refrigerated unit. If a temperature gauge on the refrigerated unit reflects a temperature that exceeds the critical limit, the condition may be deemed outside the bounds of control, and thus assumed hazardous.
To ensure an identified potentially hazardous condition is maintained within the established critical limits, the condition may be monitored according to established monitoring procedures. Where monitoring procedures indicate that a hazardous condition exists, an appropriate established corrective action may be implemented. Verification procedures may be established to verify that the corrective action has been implemented where required, and that all other principles are adequately followed. Finally, recordkeeping procedures may be implemented to enable continuous evaluation of an industry's performance history to facilitate a foundational program that provides the basic environmental and operating conditions necessary to prevent food safety hazards.
As federal regulations now mandate application of HACCP principles in addition to Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) and other food safety and quality assurance requirements applicable to food service industries, many such industries conduct internal inspection processes as a matter of routine to ensure federal compliance prior to federal inspection. Further, many food service establishments independently adopt standard operating procedures and policies to enhance the establishment's ability to assure safety and quality, as well as to ensure compliance with franchise operating procedures, as applicable. Such establishments thus rely on quick and accurate inspection processes to ensure regulatory and standard operating procedure compliance without compromising their efficiency.
Failure to meet regulatory and standard operating procedure mandates may have deleterious effects, including, in some cases, forced closure of a food service establishment. A negative self-audit may imbue similar results where the audit is inadvertently released to the public and the associated food service establishment is thereby subjected to social condemnation. To avoid this result, the integrity and security of data obtained from a self-audit or even a regulatory audit is of the utmost importance. Similarly, standard operating procedure mandates may include trade secrets exclusive to a particular food service establishment, thereby necessitating the highest degree of data security and privacy of audit criteria as well as audit results.
Accordingly, a need exists for an automated interactive inspection process that facilitates a quick and accurate assessment of regulatory and standard operating procedure compliance while ensuring data security and privacy. Beneficially, such an automated interactive inspection process would provide automated presentation of audit questions relevant to regulatory and standard operating procedure mandates, provide immediate results of sanitary inspection and testing procedures, require immediate correction of a condition that does not comply with applicable mandates and/or predetermined quality control criteria, and maintain the audit results and/or audit criteria in a manner accessible exclusively to authorized users. Such an automated interactive inspection process is disclosed and claimed herein.